I'm taking the LSAT in December.

I filled out the registration at the kitchen table this afternoon and bought a book of old tests at the used bookstore near Eastern Market. It's the size of a phone book and weighs about as much as my conscience.

Then I called home. Mummy screamed and handed the phone to Daddy, and Daddy said, "Good. Very good," in the voice he uses for report cards and oil prices. I said, Daddy, I'm taking a test. That's all I'm promising. Not law school. One Saturday morning in December with a number-two pencil. He said, "Of course," in a way that meant he had already called three uncles.

Here's the real reason, which I didn't tell them. It isn't for them. It's Mrs. B's letter (see the 14th), and all the letters like it. For a year I've been writing "Thank you for sharing your concerns" to people who need more than that. I don't know if a law degree is the "more." But I'd like to find out with my eyes open, instead of deciding at 24 that my father is wrong about everything just because he's my father.

Went back to the church on the corner this morning. Miss Verna, the usher, had saved me a seat. That's two Sundays. I don't know yet if it's a habit.

Bayo count: 7.

Ninety-four letters. One began "Dear Sir or Madam or Computer." I made sure a person answered it. Too tired for anything else. Sunday.

I went to church today, for the first time since I moved to Washington fourteen months ago.

In Houston we went to a big Nigerian church where the service ran three hours and everybody knew my mother. Here I've been telling myself Sunday is for sleeping. Mostly it's been for lying in bed listening to my housemate Greg's radio through the wall.

There's a small brick church three blocks from our house. The congregation is mostly older, mostly Black, mostly women in hats. I came in late and stood at the back like a man who might bolt, and an usher in white gloves took my elbow and walked me to a pew near the front, which was the opposite of what I wanted and exactly what I needed.

They sang "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," which is my mother's favorite. I had to look very hard at the hymnal for a while.

Afterward the usher, Miss Verna, asked my name, and then asked where my people are from. I said Houston. She waited. I said my parents are from Nigeria, from Ibadan. She said, "Well, you're from here now too. There's coffee downstairs." The coffee was terrible. I stayed an hour.

I don't know what I believe these days. I do know nobody had touched my elbow in a month.

There are two kinds of letters. The ones that start "Dear Congressman" and quote a newspaper, and the ones that start "I have never written to a Congressman before." I read the second kind twice.

Today's was from a woman in the district. She's 78 and wrote in pencil on lined paper. She and her husband spend more on their heart pills than on groceries, because Medicare doesn't pay for pills, and she wanted to know if the Congressman thought that was right. At the bottom she wrote, "Please excuse my handwriting, I am not as steady as I was." Her handwriting is better than mine. I've been calling her Mrs. B in my head all day.

My job is to answer her with the approved paragraph on prescription drugs, four sentences written last spring by someone who has since moved on. I'm allowed to adjust it. I spent forty minutes. I took out "the Congressman is closely monitoring this issue" and then put it back, because Karen, our legislative director, would have put it back anyway, and Karen edits with a pencil and no mercy. Then I added one sentence with the name of the senior caseworker in the district office, who might know of a program that can help. That sentence is the only one in the letter that's any use to her.

It went out tonight over the Boss's signature, which is applied by a machine in the back room. I didn't know about the machine before this job either.

Everybody is somebody's Mrs. B. My grandmother is in Ibadan, and my mother sends her blood pressure pills through a cousin who flies home every Christmas.

The Members are back. The halls of the Rayburn Building are full again of men in navy suits walking fast and young people in navy suits walking faster. I'm one of the young people. My suit is from a sale in Houston; my mother had the sleeves taken in.

This morning the Boss said, "Good to see you, Brian." Close. Better than July.

Lunch in the basement cafeteria, where two hundred people eat alone together, reading memos.

It's 9/9/99, and our systems guy made everybody save their work before nine this morning, in case some old program read all those nines as a signal to quit. Nothing happened. We're saving the panic for New Year's.

My little brother Tunde, who is 15, called the office (he is not allowed to call the office) to remind me that the Dreamcast comes out today, that his birthday is in October, and that he has been "very focused on school." I reminded him I make $24,000 a year. He said, "That's a lot." It is and it isn't, little brother.

My three housemates scattered for the long weekend. Greg, who works for a Senator, went home to Ohio. Katie went to the beach in Delaware. Sanjay, who is in graduate school and cooks like an angel, went wherever Sanjay goes. I had the whole rowhouse to myself, which I thought I wanted.

I cleaned the kitchen. I read the whole paper. In the afternoon I walked down to the Mall, around the Tidal Basin and up to the Lincoln Memorial, where families from everywhere were taking pictures of each other. I took one for a family from Minnesota. The father thanked me three times. It was the longest conversation I'd had since Friday.

Here is what I haven't written before. I'm lonely here. Not sad, exactly. I just come home and realize nobody has asked me a question all day that wasn't about a letter. At work I'm the mail guy. At home I'm a name on the bathroom schedule. In college in Austin I had forty friends. I know where they went: Dallas, law school, Houston, medical school, marriage. I just don't know how you make new ones after 22.

Called home around nine. Mummy asked if I'd eaten. I said yes. I'd had cereal, and she could tell. She said, "Omo mi, you need to eat food." My child, you need to eat food. Meaning rice. Meaning her rice. Of everything anyone has said to me this year, that's the one that nearly did me in.

Sunday's phone call, Houston edition, now on speakerphone so the whole family can participate.

Daddy's position: law school or medical school, and since I dropped organic chemistry in 1995, "it will have to be law." Mummy's position: same, and also come home. My sister Funmi's position, from across the kitchen: "Leave him alone," which was nice of her, followed by "He could always do law," which was less nice. Funmi is 19, pre-med, and refers to herself as the good child. My brother Tunde's position: Dreamcast.

The thing is, my father drove a taxi in Houston for two years with an engineering degree from Nigeria before anybody would hire him as an engineer. He never talks about it. My mother worked nights at the hospital for eleven years. They did not cross an ocean so their son could open other people's mail for $24,000 a year. I understand the math. I just can't tell whether I want what they want, or only want it because they want it, or don't want it for the same reason. That's a lot of wanting for one kitchen phone.

My cousin Bayo just started law school in Atlanta. Mummy has mentioned this four times since July. I've started counting.

Bayo count: 4.

August recess. The Boss is back in the district shaking hands at county fairs, the House is out, and the office has gone quiet in a way that shows you how loud it usually is. We wear khakis. The chief of staff wore a golf shirt today and nobody knew where to look.

The mail doesn't take a recess. I did 120 letters today: Social Security, Y2K, guns, the tax bill, and one from an 8-year-old asking the Congressman to please "do something about the hole in the sky." She drew the ozone layer in crayon, mostly blue with a black circle. I sent her the environment letter, which is written for grown-ups, and then asked Karen, our legislative director, if I could add a line. Karen said one line. I wrote: "Thank you for your drawing. It is on our wall." Then I went and put it on the wall, so it would be true.

For the record, $24,000 a year comes to a little over fifteen hundred a month after taxes. My room in the group house is $450. I walk to work. I eat a lot of rice and beans, and most weeknights there's a reception somewhere in the House office buildings with free cheese cubes, which is the secret economy of Capitol Hill. Nobody tells you in college that someday you'll plan your week around cheese.

Letters to the letters guy: [email protected]
I read every one, and I promise not to send you a form reply.

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